WHO'S IN CHARGE HERE?Magpie is a former journalist, attempted historian [No, you can't ask how her thesis is going], and full-time corvid of the lesbian persuasion. She keeps herself in birdseed by writing those bad computer manuals that you toss out without bothering to read them. She also blogs too much when she's not on deadline, both here and at Pacific Views.

Magpie roosts in Portland, Oregon, where she annoys her housemates (as well as her cats Medea, Whiskers, and Jane Doe) by attempting to play Irish music on the fiddle and concertina.

And since the report comes from the Herald Sun in Australia  hardly the world's most reliable source  you have to take it with several grains of salt. If even half of the details are true, however, something very strange is going on.

An elite US unit has secretly removed a cache of weapons-grade uranium from a vulnerable site in Poland, fearing terrorists could have stolen it to make a crude nuclear bomb.

Despite efforts to improve security at the Maria research reactor in Swierk, National Nuclear Security Administration officials determined there was the serious potential threat of a "diversion" to terror groups.

"This is the easiest material to make a crude nuclear weapon with," agency spokesman Bryan Wilkes said of the highly enriched uranium. "Terrorists want to make one."

Working with Polish authorities, the US agency this week extracted 41kg of uranium in green canisters marked "radioactive" and "fissile".

A huge motorcade delivered it to a Russian plane, which flew to a secure disposal site.

Given that the Russians can't even control their own nuclear materials, why would anyone with brains hand over dangerous nuclear material to them? Of course, no one in Dubya's administration has any brains, so I guess the question answers itself.